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Jewish World Review March 7, 2008 / 30 Adar I 5768 Condi's echo-chamber By Caroline B. Glick
Rice arrived in Israel in a week marked by Fatah-incited violence against
Israel and Israelis both in Judea and Samaria and within sovereign Israel.
On Monday a well organized group of hundreds of Arab thugs in Jerusalem
threw rocks at Jewish motorists. A dozen hoodlums nearly lynched two
municipal inspectors when, after blocking traffic on Salah al-Din Street
with burning tires, they stoned the inspectors' vehicle and began shattering
their windshield with a metal pipe. The two escaped by the skin of their
teeth.
Outside Hebron, an Israeli was attacked by yet another mob and escaped alive
only by opening fire at his assailants.
In another incident, Fatah forces murdered one Palestinian and seriously
wounded an Israeli outside of Hebron. The US-financed group claimed that its
operatives lured the Israeli to the scene.
In Ramallah and Hebron, thousands of Fatah members rallied in support of
Hamas and its missile offensive against the Western Negev. Israeli Arabs too
escalated their verbal and physical assaults on Israel and Israeli Jews in a
series of demonstrations which culminated so far in a mass demonstration in
support of Hamas which took place on Tuesday evening in Umm el Fahm.
In Judea and Samaria, Fatah leader and Palestinian Authority Chairman
Mahmoud Abbas referred to the IDF's operations in Gaza as an attempted
"holocaust." He praised terrorists, suspended negotiations with Israel and
reiterated his refusal to recognize Israel. His deputies and associates
echoed his incendiary remarks and also spoke in support of armed attacks
against US forces in Iraq.
Then there is Egypt. Last Monday, two days before Hamas escalated its
missile offensive against southern Israel, Egypt released 21 Hamas
terrorists from custody in al-Arish. Twelve of the men were reportedly
detained while carrying weapons and attempting to cross into Israel to
conduct terror attacks. They were escorted to Gaza by scores of Egyptian
security officials and handed over to Hamas.
One might think that in the face of Fatah's obvious support for Hamas's
efforts to destroy Israel that Rice might have begun to question her
devotion to Palestinian statehood and support for Fatah. It might have made
her question her refusal to support an Israeli bid to retake control over
Gaza's border with Egypt. Indeed, in light of Iran's deep involvement in
Hamas's missile offensive, it might have even occurred to Rice that an
Israeli reoccupation of Gaza would weaken Iran and so put a damper on its
efforts to take over Lebanon and Iraq.
But none of these developments had any impact on Rice, or for that matter on
her boss President George W. Bush. Ignoring Fatah's obvious involvement in
terror and increasingly overt support for Hamas's missile war against
Israeli civilians, Bush overrode a Congressional ban on the transfer of $150
million to Fatah. Similarly, in her visit to Egypt this week, Rice announced
that the administration was overriding a Congressional decision to block the
transfer of $120 million to Egypt due to its refusal to prevent Hamas
weapons smuggling operations from Egypt.
In her joint press conference with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Rice acted
as though nothing notable had transpired over the past two weeks. Rice
announced that the US will be giving $148 million to UNRWA in 2008 - this
despite the fact that UN refugee camps in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and
Samaria and Jordan are all hotbeds of terror recruitment, training and
indoctrination. She ignored Hamas's widespread popularity in Palestinian
society, called for Israel to step up its humanitarian aid to Gaza, and
defended the Palestinians as victims. As she put it, "Hamas … in effect,
holds the people of Gaza hostage in their hands."
Ignoring Abbas's open support for Hamas against Israel, Rice claimed that he
had agreed to return to the negotiating table and insisted that the only way
to end violence is to establish a Palestinian state. She then intimated that
in the midst of Fatah's open support for Hamas's Iranian-supported open war
against Israel, she expected Israel to take action to demolish the
communities its citizens have built in Judea and Samaria claiming, "We do
need to have improvements on the ground. We do need to have the parties
meeting their roadmap obligations."
Some Israelis and supporters of Israel attribute Rice's irrational
championing of Palestinian statehood to anti-Israeli bigotry. These voices
cite Rice's penchant for drawing parallels between white supremacists in the
pre-Civil Rights Movement era American South and Israeli soldiers carrying
out counter terror operations in Judea and Samaria. By repeatedly invoking
this morally and factually perverted comparison, they claim that Rice
exposes a deep-seated animus towards the Jewish state and its citizens.
But there is another possible - in fact more likely -- explanation for
Rice's behavior. It is quite possible that Rice has simply isolated herself
from all information and all persons bearing information that might force
her to change her policy course.
In an investigative report on the Hamas takeover of Gaza last June, Vanity
Fair reporter David Rose recalls Rice's reaction to the terror group's
electoral victory. Speaking to reporters at the time Rice said, "I've asked
why nobody saw it coming. I don't know anyone who wasn't caught off guard by
Hamas's strong showing."
What is remarkable about this statement is what it says about the insulated
nature of Rice's world. Indeed, it is a veritable echo chamber. In Israel,
this writer, as well as the Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh warned
that Hamas was likely to win those elections. So did esteemed Israeli
diplomatic and military leaders like former UN ambassador Dore Gold, former
IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. (ret.) Moshe Ya'alon and many others. In
the Bush administration, David Wurmser, who at the time served as Vice
President Richard Cheney's Middle East Advisor, similarly warned that Hamas
would likely win. Other senior voices in the administration voiced concern
as well.
As for that, some three million Israelis who opposed the 2005 withdrawal
from the Gaza Strip warned repeatedly that the withdrawal would serve to
empower Hamas and other terror groups. Withdrawal opponents also warned that
if Israel ceded control over the international border with Egypt the border
would become a terror highway and that Katyushas was rain down on Ashkelon.
But Rice ignored all these warnings and either ignored or sidelined those
sounding them. Reveling in the warm embrace of State Department careerists
like R. Nicholas Burns, David Welch and others, Rice helped to torpedo
Ambassador John Bolton's Senate confirmation hearings. Other dissenters met
similar fates.
It is not only towards Israel and the Palestinians that Rice insists on
operating in a policy vacuum. Her stewardship of other central issues are
also marked alternately by a studied silencing of dissenting views and
outright neglect of US national interests in favor of a perception of
"progress" which doesn't exist. State Department policies towards North
Korea and Iraq are glaring examples of this overarching trend.
The Washington Post reported this week that the State Department toned
down its human rights report on North Korea. The report claimed that Glyn
Davies, principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific,
e-mailed Erica Barks-Ruggles, deputy assistant secretary for democracy,
human rights and labor last Friday asking for changes in the language on
North Korea. The e-mail suggested that "given the secretary's priority on
the six-party talks, we can sacrifice a few adjectives for the cause."
Those six-party talks ran aground on December 31 when North Korea failed to
abide by its commitment to fully disclose its nuclear inventory and its
proliferation activities. In light of this state of affairs, Jay Lefkowitz,
Bush's special envoy to North Korea on Human Rights told an audience at the
American Enterprise Institute in Washington last month that the six-party
talks had failed, and that the US should reconsider its policy towards North
Korea.
Rice's response to Lefkowitz's argument was marked by mean-spirited
hysteria. Rather than contend with the substance of his argument, she
belittled Lefkowitz. "He's the human rights envoy," Rice told reporters.
"That's what he knows. That's what he does. He doesn't work on the six-party
talks. He doesn't know what's going on in the six-party talks and he
certainly has no say in the six-party talks."
One of the oddest aspects of Rice's diplomatic activities is how little time
she devotes to Iraq. Iraq, after all, is the face of Bush's foreign policy
and in the final analysis, Bush's legacy will be determined not by what he
does to Israel or the Palestinians, but by what sort of Iraq he leaves
behind. Yet, apparently Rice couldn't care less about Iraq.
In a scathing memo sent last month to US Ambassador in Baghdad Ryan Crocker,
Manuel Miranda, a senior Republican attorney who spent the last year
overseeing the embassy's office of legislative oversight noted a complete
disconnect between the US military's valiant efforts to cultivate the
formation of a secure, democratic Iraq and the State Department's
incompetence in advancing this central US policy. Miranda described a
puerile embassy staff, bereft of institutional memory from year to year,
which ignores Iraqi society and treats the democratization drive as an
annoyance rather than the central objective of US policy in Iraq. In his
words, "In this excuse-making culture, the State Department has been an
albatross around the neck of the Coalition command."
As Miranda put it, "This past year, the State Department and the Embassy
have been led by two misguided premises: First, the obsessive aim that the
Embassy be turned into a 'normal embassy,' and, second, that the State
Department cannot be faulted for the things that the Government of Iraq is
not doing."
The fact is that this is Rice's policy. It was Rice who in November 2006,
began claiming that Iraq's failure to transform itself overnight into a
properly run federal state was solely the responsibility of Iraqi Prime
Minister Nouri Maliki.
Miranda noted that rather than cultivate a habit of liberalism by reaching
out to Iraqis as the military does, the State Department has sufficed with
training law enforcement officials and kibitzing with lawmakers. In his
words, "With few exceptions by the military and a few other recent efforts,
we have ignored the Iraqi Bar, the twenty-six [Iraqi] law schools and the
development of the culture [of liberalism] beyond the areas associated with
arrest and prosecution."
With only ten months left in office, unless Bush swiftly forces Rice to
change course, these and other policies pushed by Rice in spite of their
obvious failures will either blow up in her face, or in the face of her
successor. And of course, it isn't only her legacy that will be harmed by
her irresponsible insulation. The lives of tens of millions of people will
be imperiled by her hidebound policies.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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